it's baseball season again and that
means that from sandlots to stadiums the
great face-off between pitcher and
batter is back
there are lots of pitches a pitcher can
throw but every pitcher is judged on
their fastball the fastball is the best
pitch in the game in baseball and that's
because a heater thrown with precision
is really
really hard to hit
everyone has a fastball and it's the
pitch that gets thrown the most the very
fastest throws 105 miles per hour and
that can be havoc at the plate
batting legend ted williams once said
hitting a fastball is the single most
difficult thing to do in sports
and he was probably right batters barely
have time to see and swing at the ball
before it reaches home plate they should
not be able to hit the damn ball is the
interesting issue and there are more and
more guys throwing harder and faster in
2008 only 18 pitchers were throwing
triple digit fastballs and they
collectively threw 196 of them
by 2017 there were 40 pitchers throwing
that fast and they together threw
1017 fastballs at or above 100 miles per
hour
but what if the fastball got even faster
today we're going to look at why
throwing and hitting a 110 mile per hour
fastball is almost impossible
to find out what it takes i threw my
fastest fastball with a scientist who's
been studying pitching for decades
i tried hitting a former big leaguer's
pitch
and stepped into the virtual world to
bat against a superhuman pitching avatar
nope
let's start with the pitch baseball fans
have long been thrilled by the pure
speed of the fastball bob feller pitcher
for the cleveland indians takes time off
to demonstrate his cannonball delivery
before radar guns army ordnance
equipment had to be brought in to
measure pitch speed rockets along at a
world's record speed of 98th and 6
miles legends like bob feller and nolan
ryan threw incredible fastballs that
left batters reeling today's marvels of
the mound also sling serious speed
at the top of the radar gun is yankees
relief pitcher eraldis chapman who was
once clocked throwing a stunning 105
mile per hour fastball he pitches an
average of 101 miles per hour and last
year threw over
345 triple digit fastballs
all right so what does it actually take
to throw a ball that fast i talked to
glenn fleischig one of the world's
leading authorities on pitch mechanics
so do we have any sense of of what is
distinguishing people who have a range
that peaks out at 100 miles plus is
there something different about them
physiologically proportionally height
wise yeah that's one of the cool things
about baseball the answer is no they
tend to be tall there are some guys who
are six feet who are throwing faster
than the guys who are six foot ten
fleisig uses motion capture software to
map and correct throwing mechanics but
that doesn't mean just anyone can hurl
heat
you and i do everything right we're not
going to throw 100 miles per hour maybe
your range is you're going to throw
between 70 and 80 miles per hour and
someone else's range is they're going to
throw between 90 and 100. all we could
do with proper mechanics is get you to
the top of your range so i asked flysig
who works with pitchers from little
league all the way up through the majors
to look at my mechanics the energy has
now gone up your body the arm is in the
cockpit position what i see here is your
arm does not have enough what we call
external rotation at the shoulder
meaning if i drew a vertical line up
your trunk
i would want your
forearm to be perpendicular to that to
make a an l shape so i would want your
hand
to be much lower maybe a foot lower so
that your arm is uh cocked back more
even with glenn's advice i was only
throwing about half the speed of the
pros
so what is the outer limit in terms of
velocity leaving the hand of today's
pitchers the top pitchers have always
been about 100 miles per hour
and uh i think that is the limit 100 105
miles per hour i think the thing that
could change is the average velocity
could go up because
more guys can
optimize and maximize themselves and get
to that limit but flysig says there's
been a price for such speed
there are more injuries and part of the
problem is that more pitchers are
throwing at top velocity and constantly
throwing a top velocity and the body can
only take so much he and his colleagues
measured the force required to actually
rupture elbow ligaments turns out it's
actually the same force that a pitcher
puts through his arm when throwing at
top speed every time you go back and
forward is about 100 newton meters here
and here 100 newton meters is the
equivalent of holding
five
12 pound bowling balls
so imagine i hung 60 pounds from your
hand but that's about the equivalent of
what's happening on your elbow or
shoulder at that instant that force
makes for tiny tears in the ligaments
and over time a pitcher who throws too
hard too often is basically throwing his
arm off
flysig says that fastball mania has led
to a jump in tommy john procedures
that's the surgery to repair torn
ligaments in the elbow he says that is
the limiting factor for fastball speed i
know it'd be very exciting to see the
limits break like for other sports where
the ceiling keeps going up up i think
we're at the ceiling that the ligaments
and tendons can't take it
so why do pitchers even bother throwing
that hard
because a well-placed fastball is the
gold standard for striking out batters
to understand what a batter is up
against you have to look at this
incredibly short period of time that
they have to decide if a ball is even
worth swinging at
it's 60 feet 6 inches from the pitcher's
mound to home plate but the actual
distance is shorter the pitcher releases
the ball about 55 feet from the plate
and a fastball moving 100 miles per hour
takes about four tenths of a second to
make that trip
and here's the thing it takes 50
milliseconds for the iron brain to even
register the pitch another 150
milliseconds to swing the bat that
leaves just a split second for the
batter to decide if the pitch is worth
swinging at the batter has to pretty
much make his decision within 200
milliseconds that's why some people have
argued batteries should not be able to
do it i can tell you that it is
incredibly difficult that curved a
little bit i went to villanova
university where kevin mulvey who was
the baseball coach there and a former
pro pitcher himself smoked a few
fastballs past me
i made contact
twice
i was just
concentrating on keeping the ball away
from him i didn't want to hit you i
didn't want to come inside i didn't want
to get anywhere near you which i
appreciated he was throwing in the 80s
and was incredibly consistent but here
at villanova they've got a tireless
pitcher who can throw everything from
high school speeds right up to the truly
impossible there
nailed it
so i am inside the cave at villanova and
right now it's a virtual batter's box
inside a virtual stadium and i'm hitting
against a virtual pitcher who can throw
any style of pitch we want he can throw
a change up he can throw a fastball he
can throw a curveball or a slider he can
even do impossible pitches but no actual
bats allowed this screen alone costs
fifty thousand dollars
engineer mark giupina created the system
by inputting actual mlb pitch data so
what batters see is a real pitch
delivered virtually what we're doing
here as much as we can is
develop a training tool and then we're
also looking at to add in eeg sensors to
measure focus level eye trackers to
properly see how well the eye is moving
with with the ball we're developing
something not only to help the baseball
team but we're getting other scientists
and engineers involved in this this
project japina can do things like freeze
the ball mid-air and have batters
identify the pitch
it's going to be high
yeah hiding inside it's harder than it
sounds but some of villanova's players
took right to it curveball ball i was i
wasn't right all the time but it was
definitely very beneficial to try to
pick up and really focus in on arm
recognition and where the slot of the
ball is coming out
strike fastball we can even show you
what realistically a 120 mile an hour
fastball would look like i tried one of
those
nope
121 121 miles per hour for psychologist
jerry long the cave batting simulator
could answer questions about our ability
to track moving objects 121 miles per
hour
good grief you could hit that oh yeah
like is it really true that you've got
to keep your eye on the ball to hit it
what if the ball disappeared after 200
milliseconds the presence of the ball
should almost be unnecessary is that
true i don't know the answer to that i'd
love to find that out
i also tried one of japina's other
creations a hacked oculus rift that he's
rigged so a player can swing for the
virtual fences god the timing is
completely different alright this is a
fast ball moving in 111 miles per hour
fifth or sixth time is the churn
hey
finally right yep yes all right finally
so in the sixth or seventh attempt
knowing exactly when and where this ball
is coming standing way in the back of
the batter's box so that my sweet spot
is perfectly aligned with the incoming
trajectory of this pitch i was able to
make contact with a 111 mile per hour
impossibly fast fastball
so will we ever see a pitch like that in
real life
probably not
but virtual reality could help us better
understand how batters track
and connect with the ball because what
they're doing now is already almost
impossible